


No Pulse

by legendofkuvira (jephaway)



Category: Overwatch (Video Game), The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, F/F, Fake Science, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-13
Updated: 2017-11-13
Packaged: 2019-02-01 20:44:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12712620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jephaway/pseuds/legendofkuvira
Summary: At the behest of her superiors, Angela pays Nadiya a visit with an offer to work together on her nanobyte project. After seeing the evidence for herself, Nadiya can't help but say yes.





	No Pulse

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a mid-flight revelation of the fact that Nadiya and Angela's research is incredibly similar. So naturally, I had to ship them. And this happened. You're welcome. 
> 
> This will probably be told in short snippets and vignettes because writing a very long continuous story is too hard, #lol

The Do-Good Fellowship was founded in alignment with Overwatch, not as an arm of the organization, but as a friend. The organizations traded names and secrets, and occasionally personnel. Dogood and Overwatch both employed the best doctors, the most cunning tacticians, the strongest soldiers.  When the Do-Good Fellowship took on Nadiya Jones and her artificial skin technology, it was a natural reaction for Overwatch to extend an invitation for Nadiya to visit their labs in Gibraltar and discuss the technology with their own Angela Zeigler, who was working on an extremely similar project. The first two times they invited her, Nadiya declined. She was too busy with  _ important _ things to take a trip to Spain to visit another Doctor whose work she neither knew nor cared about.

 

It was after a month of Nadiya holding firm to the second rejection that Angela found herself stepping off of a skimmer and onto the deck of the Berg. It was a warm, sunny day on the Gulf of Mexico. The sun reflected off the waves in a cascade of bright, glimmering light. Angela held a hand to her brow to get a glimpse of the gulf (and a gauge on how far they were into international waters) before she is quickly escorted inside an elevator by a pair of Dogood soldiers. 

 

_ How much  _ good _ can one do with a gun? _

 

Angela isn’t given much in the way of a tour of the Berg. The elevator shoots straight down to the second floor. On the way down, she is given a visitor’s badge and very specific instructions. 

 

“Despite being part of one of the most elite teams in the Dogood Fellowship, Dr. Jones enjoys her privacy. Don’t pry into her work without prompting.”

 

“Don’t ask her specific details about the construction of her synthetic skin.”

 

“Don’t take any notes.”

 

“Don’t take any pictures.”

 

“Any questions?”

 

Angela is deposited in a long, quiet hallway. When the elevator doors slide shut behind her and the engines begin to whirr, she feels just a hint of nerves. She had heard about Nadiya’s work before either of them joined these world-shaping organizations. When Angela was working the front lines of the Omnic Crisis, she had seen Nadiya’s work firsthand. Early prototypes of her synthetics had saved countless lives on the front lines, and it had inspired Angela’s own independent research into nanobyte technology. 

 

To the left of the elevator door is an innocuous office door in a dark wood. It stands in contrast to the sterile hall extending several meters ahead that ends in a pair of double doors, labeled with a bright red sign: EXIT. On the dark wood door is a nameplate: DR. NADIYA JONES MD-PHD. Angela adjusts her own name tag, clipped to the pocket of her blazer. The floor is silent. She fidgets with her bun and braces herself before approaching and knocking sharply on the door. If her heart still had a beat, it would be hammering in anticipation. The seconds that pass feel heavy against Angela’s chest. She forces herself to take a breath.

 

The lock on the door clicks and it swings open. Nadiya Jones is more intimidating up close than she is in any of the pictures, six inches taller than Angela with a curved nose and hard-set jaw framed by the dark fabric of her shayla. Nadiya doesn’t say anything, simply takes a step back and motions for Angela to enter the office. Angela takes the opportunity while she has it and quickly steps inside. The office is dark. Bookshelves line the walls, stuffed to the brim with thick-bound medical journals and neatly arranged trinkets- a piece of pottery in a glass case, a silver caduceus, a framed photograph of a man. The desk in the center of the room is far less organized, covered in open files, empty coffee mugs, and an overflowing ashtray. A woman after Angela’s own heart.

 

Once the door is closed behind her, Angela turns to Nadiya and offers a hand. “I’m-”

 

“Dr. Angela Zeigler.” Nadiya folds her hands behind her back and walks past Angela. She steps up to one of the shelves of books and begins to run her fingers along the spines, searching for something. “You earned your first graduate-level degree in Switzerland at the age of sixteen. You’re one of the most brilliant scientific minds in the entire world. And you’re wasting your time and talents with an organization like Overwatch.”

 

“I wouldn’t say-”

 

“You’re creating a way for cells to replicate almost instantaneously without causing cancerous mutations. I’ve read all about your work.” Nadiya pulls out a binder and turns to Angela, flipping through its contents. “You were on the front lines during the Omnic Crisis as a first responder, using  _ my  _ technology to save lives.”

 

Nadiya turns the binder around for Angela to see. The page she has open is a photocopied headline from an Irish newspaper. Under the headline is an image of Angela, spraying Nadiya’s synthetic skin onto a wounded child. Angela remembered the boy, but she didn’t remember the photograph. He had been caught in the destruction of his town and carried by his older sister to the safe zone in Kinnitty. His wounds were extensive and Nadiya’s technology saved his life. After the crisis had ended, the sister sent Angela an invitation to the boy’s thirteenth birthday party. She kept the invitation framed on her desk as a reminder of why she was doing this. 

  
  


“You’ve done your research.” Angela finally says.

 

“I’m very thorough.” 

 

“Then you already know why I’m here.” Angela puts a hand on the seat situated across from Nadiya’s desk. “May I?”

 

Nadiya nods and takes her own seat at her desk. She clears a small space and lays the binder down, the page with the newspaper clipping still facing up. 

 

“Overwatch and the Do-Good Fellows think it would be beneficial for us to work together. My breakthroughs in nanotechnology could greatly aid your synthetic skin, and vice versa. I believe that if we apply a small group of nanos into the formula of your spray, it could speed up the healing process and help to stabilize serious wounds much more quickly. And if I had a way to have the aerosol form of the nanobots stay concentrated to the area of the wound, instead of working to repair the entire body, the Caduceus would be much more effective in battle and have less… long-lasting effects.”

 

“Long-lasting effects?” Nadiya raises an eyebrow.

 

Angela tugs at the collar of her turtleneck. “Early tests proved to have unintended side effects. I’ve been able to minimize the effects but it would be easier with a way to focus the beam on the injury.”

 

“Well, I’m glad that you think  _ my  _ research could be so useful to you, Dr. Ziegler, but I’m not interested. My synthetic skin is too important to just hand pieces off to some doctor in a shady military organization. I joined the Do-Good Fellows because I needed funding to continue my work without prying eyes. Isn’t it counterproductive for me to agree to help you?”

 

“Don’t you think that we’ll both come to the same point in our research eventually?” Angela counters. She leans forward in her seat, elbows on her knees. “Dr. Jones, we could save innumerable lives with our research. That little boy,” Angela points to the photograph, “would have died without our work. I’m not asking you to do this for Overwatch, or for the Do-Good Fellows. You and I- we could end pain and suffering. We could cure the incurable, we could-”

 

“Stop death.” Nadiya turns back a few pages in the binder. “You want to stop death.” 

 

The page that Nadiya turns to is a photocopy of a painfully familiar image. A ten-year-old girl in an oversized lab coat, hoisted up on the broad shoulders of a laughing man. Her hair is in pigtails and her large glasses make her face seem much smaller than it is. Next to them, a woman in a wide brimmed hat grins, her manicured hand resting on the little girl’s knee. It’s Angel and her parents, the day they found out she was accepted into an undergraduate program in Zurich. By the time she graduated at thirteen, she would be an orphan. 

 

“How did you get that photograph?” Angela cannot help her open-mouthed gaze. The original sits on her desk in Gibraltar. There’s no way Nadiya should know it even exists, let alone have a copy of it in a binder on her bookshelf.

 

“The Do-Good Fellowship is good at getting information, Dr. Ziegler.” Nadiya closes the binder and rises from her seat. “I acknowledge your offer but I won’t contribute  _ my own _ time and effort to  _ your _ fool’s errand.”

 

“It is  _ not  _ a fool’s errand.” Angela stands too. Her hand trembles, debating within herself whether it’s worth revealing the extent of her work to Nadiya. There are things she’s done that not even Overwatch knows. Off-the-books experiments on the effects of the Caduceus on human subjects. On herself. “It  _ works _ . I can prove it to you.”

 

“I think you should leave.” 

 

Nadiya heads for the door and Angela steps in front of her, blocking her path. Energy buzzes between them and Angela snatches Nadiya’s hand as she reaches to push her aside.  “This is  _ my _ work, Dr. Jones. If you don’t take me on my word, then I’ll show you myself.”

 

With her free hand, Angela pulls down the collar of her turtleneck, revealing the dark patches hidden beneath. Nadiya goes through several emotions at once, before settling on disbelief. Keeping her grip tight, Angela presses Nadiya’s fingers against her carotid artery, their faces so close that Angela can smell the lingering tobacco on Nadiya’s breath. She inhales and exhales slowly, watching the expression on Nadiya’s face shift from patronizing disbelief to wonder. Her fingers linger there in the crook of Angela’s longer than it takes to realize that there is no familiar expansion and contraction of the artery. After a long moment, Angela releases her grip and Nadiya lowers her arm.

 

Angela pulls up her collar but maintains eye contact with Nadiya. This is it. Either she agrees to help and Angela can continue to press her research, or she exposed her secret for nothing. There will be no confidentiality between them if Angela walks away from this. The ball is in Nadiya’s court. She must be the one to make the next move, no matter what it may be.

 

“There’s no pulse.”

 

“No pulse.”

 

Nadiya takes Angela’s wrist, pushing up her sleeve, and pressing her fingers against the pulse point in her wrist. There’s nothing there for her to find. No pulse to confirm that Angela is a living human with a beating heart.

 

“This shouldn’t be possible. How-”

 

“It’s the nanobytes.” Angela wraps her fingers around Nadiya’s wrist. “Overwatch wouldn’t let me test them on human subjects, so I did it myself. It went too far and I  _ need  _ your help. I didn’t want to cure death, Doctor Jones, but I did.”

 

“This doesn’t make sense. Your heart isn’t beating, you shouldn’t be alive right now.” Nadiya shakes her head but makes no effort to move away.

 

“As we speak, the nanobytes in my body are working rapidly to repair even the earliest stages cell decay.” Angela tightens her grip on Nadiya’s wrist. “I can’t be injured. I can’t contract even the most infectious of diseases. I can’t  _ die _ .” 

 

“Wait, so let me get this straight.” Nadiya waves her free hand in the space between her and Angela. “You injected yourself with experimental nanobytes- ones that had never been through human testing- and now you can’t die.” Angela nods. “And you want me to help you scale back the effects?”

 

Angela nods again.

 

“Okay. I’m in.”


End file.
